A federal whistleblower alleges that a Department of Homeland Security program called the “Unlawful Voter Initiative” directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees to pose as individual voters to access their records on state voter-lookup websites, in ways that may break state laws. The anonymous, nearly 30-page disclosure was published on September 14, 2026, by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Alex Padilla. The whistleblower is represented by Democracy Defenders Fund, which said the person is anonymous because of “an extreme fear of retaliation.”
According to the report, each officer “was given a quota of at least five subjects to be reviewed per hour and 40 subjects per day ... giving officers only twelve minutes to determine if a subject is a U.S. citizen.” It says “employees may be required to use the PII to make false attestations that they are the voter or are acting with the voter's express authorization,” and that the program “has potentially already committed thousands of violations of state law.” Some states, such as Virginia, limit their lookup tools to people who attest they are checking their own records. When officers raised concerns, they were told they were “not personally liable for conducting these searches when done as part of their official duties and properly documented.” Officers were told to create law enforcement records even if they believe “the DHS source data is not reliable enough,” and the training acknowledged “there will be U.S. citizens in this population.” The whistleblower's lawyers said the effort covers “50 states and is targeted at up to hundreds of thousands of individuals.”
DHS defended it. “The Department accessed publicly available data from states' voter rolls and cross referenced them with known aliens in our systems. It's not rocket science; it's an easy step to secure our elections,” a spokesperson said, adding, “There is no quota on criminality.” Padilla asked, “If this effort is truly legal, then why does DHS leadership have to promise its officers that they're not going to be held liable?” Schumer said “DHS is telling officers to lie to do it.” The senators asked DHS to stop the program and answer their questions by September 21.
These are allegations. They are supported by training excerpts released with the report, but no court, inspector general or state has found that the searches broke state law, and the organization representing the whistleblower has opposed many Trump policies in court (see The Administration Turned an Immigration Database Into a Voter Citizenship Checker. A Judge Vacated It, and the Supreme Court Put It Back. and DHS Claims 250,000 Noncitizens Are Registered to Vote in Four States. Fact-Checkers and the States Say the Number Is Wildly Inflated.).
Update (September 17, 2026): Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, an elected Democrat, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin saying the department may have violated several Virginia laws. The letter, obtained by the Associated Press, demands that DHS confirm in writing whether it directed anyone to look up Virginia voters' information without that voter's permission, and asks Mullin to preserve access logs, correspondence and the training materials the whistleblower described.
The legal problem Jones identifies is specific: Virginia's voter-lookup tool is limited to people who attest under penalty of law that they are searching for their own record, and, as he wrote, “Virginia Election Code does not permit disclosure of this protected information to the federal government without a court order.”
AP added detail to the whistleblower's account, reporting that USCIS staff were made in late August to drop other work, complete a training of under two hours, and begin running department-supplied lists of people through state voter registration systems to find “unlawful voters,” at roughly 40 individuals per day.
DHS had not responded to AP at publication. No court has ruled on the allegation.
Update (September 21, 2026): part of the account now has sworn support, and part does not. On September 14 the Justice Department filed a notice in a federal voter-data case with a declaration from a senior official in the immigration agency's fraud unit, who swore that the unit “has been investigating potential illegal voting by aliens who are not lawfully permitted to vote” and had pulled Social Security Administration data “to verify information and help determine whether illegal voting may have occurred.” The Social Security Administration's general counsel declared that the agency had recently learned DHS was using a data connection re-opened in July for four states for other purposes. The filing says nothing about officers posing as voters on state websites, the heart of the whistleblower's allegation, and the Justice Department says the queries fell outside the court's earlier order.
On September 17, eighteen senators led by Alex Padilla and Chuck Schumer asked the DHS inspector general to open an investigation immediately, writing, “This initiative plainly appears to be a political exercise that poses risks to national security.” Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff separately asked California Attorney General Rob Bonta to review whether the searches broke state law, citing “potential violations of California state law, including federal officers impersonating California voters to access their state voting records.” That is a request, not an investigation, and Bonta had not responded. Their letter quotes training material saying California's voter file “was passed to us by the department,” but not the line spoken just before it: “It doesn't mean that the initial source was DHS.” A DHS spokesperson told the Washington Examiner, “The only magic being performed here is the media conjuring controversy out of commonplace law enforcement.” No inspector general, court or state has made a finding.
Update (September 24, 2026): the disclosure is now evidence in a federal lawsuit. On September 18 San Francisco, Santa Clara County, two nurses' unions and Voto Latino sued DHS in Northern California, citing it to argue that the department's target lists include eligible citizens and that sending agents to question voters at home amounts to voter intimidation. A preliminary-injunction hearing is set for October 1 (see DHS Launched a Nine-State Voter Fraud Surge With Field Interviews as Early Voting Opened).